by Pete Rawlik
The phone call ended all that, and slowed my investigation of the death of Halsey-Griffith to a crawl. The Arkham cops were all riled up—there had been a kidnapping. A child of a laundry worker had vanished and the locals were pointing the figure at the local boogeyman, the legendary witch, Keziah Mason. Normally this was the exact kind of thing the Chief would pawn off on me, or another member of the State Police, but the local papers had gotten wind of things and were forcing Nichols to act directly. He had sent a force on a predawn raid to the ravine beyond Meadow Hill, where they encountered a curious gathering of revelers who had gathered around the ancient white stone that had long been the subject of regional superstitions. The officers on site had been unable to capture any of the group, but they had glimpsed one suspect, a huge negro whom they described as easily seven or eight feet tall. The Chief himself had driven out to take charge of the search, and had taken a half dozen bloodhounds with him in hopes of finding little Ladislas Wolejko, or the men who had taken him. They needed me to do some busy work, talk to the mother again, and her boyfriend— the two of them had been cagey with the local detectives. There was a level of distrust between the Polish immigrants and the Arkham police force, and the thought was that maybe they might trust the State Police, meaning me, a little bit more.
Orne’s Gangway is a seedy alleyway that runs through a series of dilapidated tenements that house some of the poorest and least-educated residents of Arkham, men and women who labor at the most menial of tasks. Anastasia Wolejko was one of the lowest of these, a washwoman who worked ten hours a day, whose husband had disappeared before the boy was even born. Her boyfriend, Pete Stowacki, had been less than cooperative and had apparently wanted the child out of the way anyway. She kept the child with a neighbor, Mary Czanek, during the day. Rumor had it that Czanek was a gypsy and that Anastasia had wanted Mary to sleep in the child’s room, to protect it from being taken by Keziah Mason. Czanek had refused.
All this I learned from the notes provided by the officers who had carried out the previous interviews. But I knew something that they didn’t, that it wasn’t Wolejko or Stowacki who needed a second look, but rather the woman who watched the child, Mary Czanek. I found her where I expected, at home with ten children of various ages, none of them hers, crying and playing in the crumbling sty that she called an apartment. Something in the kitchen smelled like rotting cabbage and the stench wafted out and permeated not only the apartment, but the alley as well. She was friendly enough, meaning she let me in and pretended to want to talk with me, but her answers in broken English and nonsensical Polish made things difficult. I let it go on for a few minutes and then put a stop to it.
“Mrs. Mary Czanek,” I said forcefully, “husband Joseph deceased, body found on the beach in Kingsport back in April of 1920.” She was suddenly quiet. “That was your husband, Mrs. Czanek, correct?” She nodded. “That would make you Mary Fowler, Mary Elizabeth Fowler, born in Aylesbury, which is you, correct?”
Suddenly the whole immigrant demeanor was gone. “You know it is.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest.
“So, let me get this straight. You’re what, the five-times great granddaughter of the witch Goody Fowler, the sister of Keziah Mason and Abigail Prinn, the three hags that give Arkham the epitaph ‘witch-haunted,’ is that right?”
“Something like that.”
“Do the people round here know that? Do they know you’re related to Keziah? Do they know that her blood flows through your veins?”
There was a panicked look in her eyes. “No.”
“But you’ve told them you have powers, you sell them hexes and charms, little bags of bullshit, right.” She nodded reluctantly.
“Mary, this is what’s going to happen now.” I closed my notebook. “You are going to tell me exactly why you’re down here, why you’ve been down here for more than a decade. You’re going to tell me what happened to your husband, Joe, and then you’re going to tell me what happened to little Ladislas Wolejko.” There were tears welling up in her eyes. “If you don’t, Mary, if you dick me around and try any more of this crap I will let everyone down here know exactly who you are, and then, when they come after you, and trust me they will come after you, I’m going to have a front row seat as they take you out and string you up, just like they did to witches back in the day.”
She was sobbing, choking on her own gasping breath. “You promise you won’t tell?”
I nodded. “I promise. You tell me what I’ve asked and I’ll make sure no one in Arkham knows who you are or what you’ve done, no one but me.”
I just stood there and let her work through it, but finally she told me. She told me everything. She told me about how she had been caught making little spirit bags and how her paternal grandmother had banished her from the family home at sixteen. How she had met Joe Czanek while walking down the Pike on her way to Arkham, and how he took her in and gave her a place to stay, and then a week later turned her out to any guy with five bucks. How Joe had married her just so that he could rape her and not be charged. How she had told him all about the family secrets and the legends of Arkham and Kingsport, and how one night she made sure that he went after a man in Kingsport, one she knew would never let him come home. Then she told me how she began taking care of kids from the neighborhood and how once a year a request was made of her, a request she couldn’t refuse. She didn’t actually do anything, she just picked the child, marked him or her. That was all. Then she told me where the child had been taken, and what had been done to it. When she had finished she looked at me with those big brown cow eyes full of tears and reminded me of my promise. “You promised you wouldn’t tell them, you promised.”
And I had, damn me, I had. I didn’t believe her, didn’t believe it was possible, but it all made sense, twisted, sick sense. I left her and wandered the streets in a daze, reeling from what had been said, and the promise I had made. I walked until nightfall, until the sun had set and the moon had risen. I walked until the only things I could sense were the vague blurs of obstacles in my path and the feel of my shoes beating on the sidewalk. I walked in circles, weaving my way through the city, but not seeing any of it. I crossed bridges and streets and then crossed back. I roamed the town like an accursed spirit searching for a place to haunt. Then, as if I had suddenly realized the truth, I stopped my aimless walking and instead set myself on a distinct path, with a very clear destination. I had a purpose, a goal, an objective, and a course of action. Yet in the short time it took me to reach my destination I discovered I had been thwarted. There were cops outside the Witch House, and the patrolman in charge told me that the college kid that Mary Czanek had named as a suspect, Walter Gilman, was already dead; a rat had eaten its way in through his back and then through his heart. It had burrowed straight through him. He had died screaming in agony.
That’s when I knew that Mary Czanek had been telling the truth, and I knew I would have to do something about it.
They found me around midnight, on a hill outside the city. I was sitting there beneath a tree, the body of Mary Czanek smoldering amongst the garbage I had piled around her. They had to carry me away from there before they could put the fire out; even then the gasoline I had doused her in kept things going for a while. The fire department finally had to come and smother the whole thing. There wasn’t enough to positively identify the body, and there was no evidence to connect me to her murder. I had made sure of that. They asked me about that, asked me if I knew who she was and what had happened.
“You have any idea what this is about, Peaslee?” the chief asked me point blank.
“No, sir,” I whispered, “I’ve no idea at all.” It was a lie, of course, but if I had told the truth they wouldn’t have believed me anyhow. Besides, I couldn’t tell them the truth, couldn’t tell anyone the truth. I had made a promise, a promise that I wouldn’t tell anyone what she said or who she was, that no one would hang her like they had hanged witches in the old days. No one knows what she said, no one
knows who she was, and she certainly wasn’t hanged.
I’ve kept my promise.
I think I can live with that.
CHAPTER 20
“Kingsport Days”
From the Journal of Robert Peaslee May 29 1928
They put me on leave, one day back on the job and I was on leave. The Chief didn’t want to see me, not on the job, not in the office, not even in Arkham. I was given strict instructions, things had been arranged, and I was driven to Kingsport where I would stay with my sister, Hannah, at her house. I had free run of the town, but if I was caught anywhere else, the Chief would have me in front of a review board. They took my gun and my badge, gave me twenty minutes to pack my bags. We drove from Arkham to Kingsport in uncomfortable silence. I stared out the window and watched the river pass by. The still waters were soothing to my troubled mind and I lost myself in that fluid darkness, letting it wash over my thoughts and drown away all the madness that had intruded in the last few weeks. That slate gray river lulled me into a contemplative state, and I reflected on the events that had brought me to this point.
My investigation into the death of Megan Halsey had driven me to the edge of obsession, perhaps even further. My relationship with Megan—with Megan’s memory, her ghost—had become improper, unhealthy. I had developed feelings for a dead woman. I had met her once, years ago, and had been mildly intrigued, and perhaps even developed a kind of attraction to the girl, but that was all. Now, all these years later, with her journals and notes, her entire life at my fingertips, was it any surprise that the attraction had turned into something more? I had heard of men who had lost their wives, and yet for years afterward still spoke to them, still loved them. I was reminded of the man I had met on the train, Mr. Dennis, who had loved his wife so much he was willing to risk his life to understand her death. Such love for a dead woman—could I feel the same way?
It was not a question of her gender. I had loved women before, though not for years, not since before the war. Women were complicated creatures whom I couldn’t understand no matter how hard I tried. Men I understood; their motives and actions were plain, if oft times heavy-handed, but I knew what they wanted and could respond accordingly. Women left me confused. I couldn’t discern their motivations. They seemed too whimsical, too capricious, and too unfathomable. No matter how hard I tried I simply couldn’t plumb their depths. Megan Halsey was the exception. I knew all about her; knew what she liked to eat, and read, what she liked to wear, and listen to. Megan Halsey was the first woman I had ever truly gotten close to, but only because she was dead. Was that so wrong?
I suppose in a way it was. My relationships with other people, with women and men, were always so forced, so artificial. I observed the behavior of couples I saw and imitated it, but the love they felt for each other, the passion that seemed so real, so vibrant, that made them so alive, I never felt any of that. For anyone, not even Arthur. My brother the analyst would probably blame this on what had happened to our father, and how that had made me reticent to trust anyone ever again. There was some truth to it, I suppose, and that might also explain why I was so strongly drawn to the memory of Megan Halsey. Being dead, Megan could never fail me, never disappointment, never become distant, and never leave me. In some ways she was the perfect person for me to fall in love with. Was it wrong that I loved a dead woman? Even if it was wrong, whom would it hurt? No one would ever know. Who would ever care?
Kingsport is a sleepy little town full of federal architecture and small bungalows overlooking a quaint harbor. It had been a village of shipbuilders and fishermen once, but that was decades ago, and now some great mercantile families survived by renting their own houses out to vacationing tourists; others had opened up restaurants or galleries to show off the work of local craftsmen. There were a few antique and curio shops that showcased the rich seafaring past of the village. A good portion of the harbor had been converted from a working wharf to anchorages for pleasure craft. In the public marina a few enterprising captains ran charter trips for adventurous men who longed to battle against whatever lurked in the depths.
My sister’s home was on Bradford Avenue, overlooking the public marina, and only a block from The Hall School, where she worked. It was a small two-bedroom bungalow that had once been a carriage house. It was nothing fancy, but from the front gate I could see the harbor and the islands that framed its mouth. As I walked up the shell rock path, the red, wooden barn door swung open, and my sister, Hannah, was standing there with that look on her face, the same one my mother used to give me when I had done something wrong, and she was more concerned than disappointed.
As caring as ever, Hannah hustled me inside her cottage and settled me in. It was a cozy little place, not quite cramped, but much smaller than I had been accustomed to living at Griffith House. The kitchen was tight and cluttered with a wide assortment of baking supplies, which, judging from the flour strewn about, Hannah used with some regularity. The whole south side of the house was comprised of two modestly sized bedrooms that shared a small bath. There was neither a formal dining room nor parlor, but rather a single space that functioned as both with a set of large windows looking out over the front yard and beyond that the bay. On the north side of the room there was a fireplace and a set of steep stairs that led up to a semifinished attic. Here in this drafty place my sister had set up a kind of rudimentary laboratory in which she experimented in the development of photographs. Hannah had some time ago purchased a camera, a Kodak Brownie 2, and had become a rather adept amateur photographer. It was then that I realized that the numerous framed photographs decorating her walls were the work of my own sister, and presumably captured the architecture, landscape, and inhabitants of Kingsport.
Hannah was quite proud of her work, and had been involved in her hobby for more than a decade, though she had only recently begun developing her own photographs. She had even found a way to turn her passion into a small enterprise. She had gotten into the habit of photographing the staff and students of The Hall School, sometimes as individuals, but mostly as a group image. These she could reproduce and sell to students who wished to have some keepsake of their time. Some students even paid for individual sittings. She had vast binders full of the students and teachers who had been part of the school, stacks of them, of which she was quite proud.
As much as I was pleased that my sister had secured a position and a pastime that seemed to make her happy, I knew that my mother was not. Hannah was in her late twenties and already a widow, having lost her husband, Jack, to an accident in Brooklyn. Mother had hoped for her to remarry, and while she had received several marriage proposals she had turned them all down. Not that my mother was in any position to cast stones. From what Hannah said, Mother’s second marriage had collapsed and the divorce was nearly finalized. Hannah blamed my mother’s Bohemian lifestyle, her association with the literati of Boston and New York, for her current condition. The fact that her husband had left her to pursue his own career in literature seemed not to quench Hannah’s opinion of the reasons behind Mother’s latest marital failing. Besides, it seemed that there was a man interested in Hannah, a fellow teacher at the school who had come just this year. His name was Samuel Beckett, and he was from Indiana, where his family ran a dairy farm. They had only been seeing each other for a few months, but apparently Beckett’s folksy Midwestern ways were quite charming, at least to Hannah. She promised to introduce me to him some time during the week, after I had settled in.
How exactly does one settle into a prison? True, Kingsport was more comfortable than most institutes of incarceration, and larger, too, but I had been to Paris and London—this seaside town was just too quaint for me. And knowing that I couldn’t leave made me chafe. The truth is I could have left anytime I wanted to, but I had work to do in Massachusetts, work that required me to keep my badge, that meant keeping my nose clean and getting back in the good graces of Chief Nichols. So despite my desire to cut and run I resigned myself to an extended stay in the
sleepy town of Kingsport.
That did not mean I had to enjoy it.
I immediately fell into a bad habit, of staying up all night long reading and then sleeping late. I was a voracious reader and could often read an entire book in a single day, and was often unsatisfied or disappointed with myself if I didn’t accomplish just that. So, late nights reading were followed by late mornings and then slow, leisurely walks around the wharf. Each morning I would head to the south, passing the Coast Guard Station and then the private yacht club, before turning around and heading back the same way, this time not going home, but rather to the small utilitarian building that passed as a library. The lady in charge—I hesitate to call her a librarian for fear of insulting the profession—was a thin, crane-like woman who never once bothered to introduce herself, and seemed to have horrid tastes in books, preferring popular romances by the likes of Twain and Chambers. Given that Kingsport was a resort town, such views on popular fiction were likely to be understandable, but there really is no excuse not to make authors like Watson and Hastings available. There was even a book on the shelves by my mother, a collection of her short stories called The Unreal Edge and Others. After locating a book that I thought I would enjoy, I often stopped at a small corner shop that prepared cheap, albeit fine, selections of local fare, and began my book, watching the tide go out and the boats come in. After an hour or so I would take another walk past the station and then wind my way through the streets back home. There I would do a bit of light housework, prepare dinner, and greet Hannah when she came home from school around six in the evening. She balked at this at first, but as I was not working and she was, she resigned herself to the fact that I would be taking over some duties usually assigned to women. As if that division of labor ever made any sense.